KNOX COUNTY, Tenn — When Micah Scheetz was sent home to quarantine, she didn't know what to expect She's young, healthy and had not shown any symptoms.
"On my last day of quarantine, I was about to go back to school and I just wasn't feeling well," Micah Scheetz said. "The next day I went and got tested."
Scheetz, 22, tested positive for COVID-19. At first, she said her symptoms were mild.
"It started out with just a fever, headache and just super tired," Scheetz told 10News. "About my fourth day is when I woke up with a severe headache, I couldn't even stand up or open my eyes. I was just crying and vomiting."
She began having difficulty breathing and her doctor told her to go to the hospital.
"I just felt like I had run five sprints. I just could not breathe," Scheetz said. "It just kind of hit me like, 'Oh, my gosh, I'm really this bad.'"
When Scheetz got to the hospital, her mom wasn't allowed to come with her. The doctors put her on IV medications, fluids and breathing treatments. She got chest x-rays and spent the day there.
"It's scary, just going by yourself and not knowing what's going to happen," Scheetz said. "I really turned around a lot, thankfully, in my time there."
She was able to go home that night once her oxygen levels came back up. Even so, she said she's still not feeling completely better.
"I thought it'd be just a little cold, but it really is serious. You never know how someone's gonna react to it," Scheetz said. "There's people that go to the hospital that unfortunately don't get to leave. And that's really sad. That could have been me . That could be anyone."
Across 16 counties in East Tennessee, data shows there were just 98 adult beds available in hospitals outside of intensive care units.
Some facilities, including UT Medical Center and Parkwest Medical Center, have began to defer non-essential inpatient procedures to accomodate the surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations.